Note: This is a slightly modified version of an essay I submitted for a class assignment. I am working on expanding the ideas within but this may take some time seeing as the material could easily fill an entire book.
Few dystopian novels have a greater hold on our collective conscious than Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” or George Orwell’s “1984.” These two are almost polar opposites, Huxley’s world is controlled by pleasure while Orwell’s is controlled by pain, yet the basic goals of either ruling class are the same: maintaining their own power. By comparing and contrasting different forms of control from these two dystopias, I hope to shed some light on how they converge in our world today.
I will analyze three broad categories; forceful control, resource control, and information control. Forceful control refers to the use of brute force; police, prisons, military, etc. Resource control refers to the availability of basic necessities and commercial goods. Information control refers to propaganda, access to information, and surveillance systems. The power systems in both dystopias and our world today can be thought of in these terms.
Information control
Arguably information control is the first line of defense of any power structure. If propaganda is universally believed, if people are unaware of the functioning of their society, or if they lack the information or language to understand or describe the nature of their oppression, then they are unable or entirely unwilling to organize effectively. In Orwell’s 1984, three major themes of information control are relentless propaganda, revisionist history, and surveillance. The telescreens of 1984 are present in every Party member’s home and constantly broadcasting propaganda. There is no subtlety here; every message is about the Party’s accomplishments, the enemy’s ever present evil, and how much better off everyone is thanks to the government. Generally the US government does not engage in such blatant propaganda but government institutions certainly reinforce various useful illusions, such as The American Dream. Certain historical facts are simply omitted from the history taught in schools and thus are largely unknown. These support the illusion of a just yet imperfect government.
A very strong parallel to 1984 revolves around surveillance. In this dystopia, all Party members are being watched at all times and anyone who shows any sign of heretical thought is arrested by the Thought Police. In our world, the United States government has created surveillance programs that attempt, and largely succeed, to capture and record every single piece of electronic communication in the world. There are far more terrifying programs that have come to light but hedonistic apathy and simple ignorance limit the scope of awareness. We have yet to see what the US government will do with such terrifying power.
The most pervasive propaganda campaigns in our world are run by big business. In Brave New World, humans are conditioned from birth to hold certain values and have a specific set of desires. Selfish hedonistic consumerism is imprinted on children via behavioral conditioning and hypnotic suggestion, crafting a population that loves mindless entertainment and always desires the newest gadgets. The overabundance of material goods means there is always a hot new thing to satisfy animalistic desires, so there is never a lull in the entertainment paradigm wherein people might question the status quo or engage in self reflection. This selfish hedonistic consumerism is markedly similar to the United States culture of today.
The extreme behavioral conditioning of Brave New World is largely absent in our society but we are regularly subjected to subliminal messages which warp our values and desires. The science of marketing is aimed at making people desire certain things and the marketing sectors of separate industries have a shared interest in reinforcing consumerism. Television ads target children, the most impressionable demographic, and brand mascots become idols. At such a young age, this sort of conditioning is very effective and carries over into our adult lives, even for those of us who are aware of it. These imposed superficial values and desires serve to counteract the effects of the greatest information revolution in all of human history: the internet.
The wealth of knowledge available at our fingertips, indeed in our pockets, has the potential to tear down all ideological barriers. The powers that be are right to see it as a threat, this is why there are so many attempts to censor the web. However, in Huxley’s dystopia censorship is simply not needed because people have no desire to learn beyond the needs of their hedonistic desires. We are undoubtedly seeing that trend today, enormous breaches of the social contract by major corporations and government institutions are largely ignored by the general public. Thus there will be no revolution while the circus continues.
Resource control
Despite being the second line of defense, resource control can mitigate the shortcomings of information control schemas. This can take the form of abundance or scarcity, in our world we see both acting at once on different social classes. In 1984, everyone except Inner Party members are poor and even they have minimalistic lives by our standards. Scarcity for the proles and Outer Party keeps them physically drained and struggling, both of which limit capacity for critical thought and sap energy that could otherwise go towards higher pursuits. However, if resources are too scarce then there will be ‘bread riots’ as the prevailing social order is incapable of meeting basic human needs. The ideal balance between these two is maintaining resource availability barely above subsistence levels, which is exactly what the Party has achieved in 1984.
We see this at play for the lower classes of US society. Those who live near the poverty level work long hours and earn only enough to keep a semblance of a home and provide for their most basic needs. With no time or energy to learn or examine the nature of their oppression, and lacking resources above a subsistence level, they are generally unable to organize to demand better treatment. We do see protests demanding higher wages when living conditions fall below a certain level, but the concessions made by the ruling classes are almost always the bare minimum necessary to pacify the public.
The opposite resource control schema is necessary to pacify a middle class. With a higher quality of education and far more free time, they are more prone to demand political or social change. However, since they have the time, energy, and resources, they can be distracted. This is where we see the material abundance scheme from Brave New World; the middle classes of our society can easily spend time and money on the newest gadgets, games, and TV shows. However there must always be novelty or else they will become bored. This demands consumerism perpetuated through behavioral conditioning. In Brave New World there are slogans such as “more stitches; fewer riches” while in our world we have business models based on planned obsolescence. A distracted and thoroughly entertained middle class is far less likely to agitate for change.
Forceful control
The last resort of oppressors, when information and resource control are not enough to maintain the status quo we see tear gas and batons. In our world we see different applications of violence to various social classes while the worlds of 1984 and Brave New World have opposing methods of state violence. In 1984, violence is planned as soon as any individual breaks from the Party line. The only reason they are not imprisoned immediately is to allow for more monitoring of the individual to determine psychological weaknesses. The threat is absolute, anyone who shows any hint of dissent will be disappeared and likely never seen again. Large scale crowd control is not needed as the Thought Police are always looking for political dissidents and neutralize them as soon as possible. The opposite is true in Brave New World, individuals are not monitored because they can be trusted to mindlessly pursue hedonism, while the few that do dissent are simply ignored by the rest of the population. As of now, our society does not appear to emulate either of these models.
Despite strong correlations with race and poverty, state violence directed against civilians is largely arbitrary in the US, with one major exception. We thankfully lack a government agency akin to the Thought Police so political organizations are relatively free to form. Without that safeguard, it is necessary for the power elite to violently resist any protest or movement which threatens the status quo; this usually takes the form of pseudo-soldiers posing as peace officers. We rarely hear about protests that are violently suppressed and they are relatively rare, due in large part to the brutality of the state’s response. This works to serve information control as it restricts knowledge that a counter-movement exists in the first place.
Within these three spheres of control, our world is like a hybrid of the information and resource control schemas of 1984 and Brave New World. Forceful control most certainly exists as well but it does not have the extreme attributes of either of these dystopias. If we are looking to these novels as warnings against the evils of totalitarian society, we ought to focus primarily on the information control systems from each. Some aspects of our society, particularly between hedonistic apathy and universal surveillance, are eerily close to the worlds of 1984 and Brave New World. Many of these dystopian aspects seem to be growing at a terrifying rate while others are being increasingly undermined, primarily due to the developing information age and industrial automation. We should remain vigilant against increasing similarities between our world and these dystopias lest they become predictions of our future.
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